This Innovative Tow Truck Can Steal Your Car in Under a Minute

Published by Apex Towing

June 12th, 2017

This is both awesome and scary.

As a car owner, seeing your ride get towed away is one of the worst things you can experience. It’s your fault for parking in the wrong place, but still. Anyway, here’s a tow truck that’s so fast you won’t actually see your car being towed in the first place.

It was filmed outside an airport in Turkey, taking away an illegally parked Renault Clio. The Iveco Eurocargo carrier pulls up next to the Clio and two pillar lifts descend down to the road. The forks slide out and clamp the wheels, then raise the car above the truck’s chassis. Finally, the lifts slide across to the other side the chassis and the truck is ready to drive off.

The whole process takes precisely 60 seconds. Which isn’t even enough time to realize it’s your car’s alarm you can hear wailing. Instead, the owner will have emerged to find their car isn’t where they left it. Which is actually worse than seeing it being taken away. But again, it’s their fault for leaving it in the wrong place.

It's an awesome piece of engineering - I haven't been able to ascertain the manufacturer - but quite scary, too. Partly just because it's so effective, but also because there's not much you could do to stop criminals using it to boost cars.

I'm not aware of these being used anywhere other than Turkey; have you seen one in operation?